Live At Five · Studio 550

February 26, 2026

February 27, 2026·1 hr·5 clips
Cuba's Coast Guard shot at a stolen speedboat, killing at least one American citizen and seizing weapons.
The show moves out of the news block and into the ugly afterlife of a public incident, where one person speaks and suddenly everyone wants someone to blame. He does not sound pleased with himself, or even sure where to put the feeling. He keeps coming back to the kid he mentions, worrying that the kid may end up carrying the weight for something far bigger than himself. That part sticks with him. Then the address pulls him back in. He compares what happened there with the older moment when someone shouted at Obama, using that memory as the closest thing he has to a measuring stick. The room felt wrong to him. He says the country looked like it was falling apart. From there he works through Congress, identity, representation, and the two women he sees at the center of the blowup. It is not neat, and it is definitely not delicate. He sounds like someone trying to think while the microphone is already on. He corrects himself, doubles back, and lets names and categories run together while he tries to explain who was in the chamber, who was rare in that room, and why the whole thing got under his skin. That mess is part of the episode. He is not building a tidy argument. He is circling a bad feeling that the rules are changing out loud, in public, while everyone watches. By the time the politics starts to thin out, the show drifts back toward ordinary life. Downtowns come up. He thinks they have improved some over the last ten or fifteen years, though he does not pretend the old version is returning. Malls feel different. Jeff Bezos becomes quick shorthand for the world changing, and he leaves it there. Near the end, he is half wrapping and half still working through it. He thanks the few people listening, complains about Facebook audio he still needs to fix, says nothing interesting is on tonight, and points people to the Honeymooners instead. National strain, local problems, a little nostalgia, all talked through in real time.

As heard by us

A ragged talk-radio monologue that turns headline chaos into local conversation.

The episode turns a tense news cycle into a loose, argumentative monologue, moving from the Cuba Coast Guard incident and the Columbia student detention to the fallout around a recent address. Its strongest trait is momentum.

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Why you'd press play

For a CBS News on the Hour scan of Cuba, Columbia nerves, and a tense House-floor blowup on a quiet night.

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